The reign of Fedor Ioannovich, Troubles. social movements in Russia in early XVII in. The fight against the Commonwealth and Sweden
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The period of the reign of Fedor Ioannovich
1) in 1589 With the blessing of the Patriarch of Constantinople Jeremiah II, who was in Moscow, a patriarchate was established in Russia and the direct protege and assistant of Boris Godunov, the current Metropolitan of Moscow, was elected the first patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Job (1589-1605);
2) B 1591 in Uglich at quite mysterious circumstances the last representative of the Rurik dynasty died younger son Ivan the Terrible nine-year-old Tsarevich Dmitry. historical tradition coming from N.M. Karamzin, linked his death with the name of Boris Godunov, but this version is still considered unproven and is rejected by many historians (R. Skrynnikov, V. Kobrin, V. Kozlyakov). Although, of course, the death of Tsarevich Dmitry was in the hands of Boris Godunov and opened to him direct path to the throne.
3) Russian-Swedish war of 1590-1595. There was a return of cities lost during Livonian War: Ivangorod, Yam, Koporye, Oreshek, (Korela) by Tyavzinsky peace treaty 1595. Construction white city- a powerful defensive stone line and stone Smolensk.
Board of Boris Fedorovich Godunov (1598-1605)
After death Fedor Ivanovich, the last king from the grand ducal branch of the dynasty Rurikovich, among the most influential members Boyar Duma - B.F. Godunov and F.N. Romanov(the future Patriarch Filaret) began a sharp struggle for power, in which the brother-in-law of the deceased king won.
AT February 1598 on Zemsky Sobor in Moscow on the initiative Patriarch Job and after three exhortations, Boris Godunov was elected the new Russian Tsar and Sovereign of All Russia.
Most historians believe that Godunov was very gifted and an experienced person and large statesman, which in other historical conditions could be of great benefit to the country.
Boris Godunov Seriously shaken up the whole composition of the Boyar Duma and first dealt with his longtime opponent Fyodor Nikitich Romanov. In 1600, together with his wife Ksenia Ivanovna Shestova, he was forcibly tonsured a monk and, under the monastic name Filaret, was taken to Kholmogory and imprisoned in the distant Anthony-Siysky Monastery. Chapter Ambassadorial Order dumny clerk Vasily Yakovlevich Shchelkalov was also exiled.
AT 1601-1603 years, in the country three years in a row because of terrible weather conditions: first drought, and then heavy rains and early frosts, was severe crop failure, which caused a massive, unprecedented in its scale hunger. Government of Boris Godunov made every effort to somehow alleviate social tension in the country: it organized public Works in different cities and the massive free distribution of bread to the starving from government stores. Besides, a special royal decree restored the right of peasants to move on St. George's Day (1601/1602). However, all the measures taken had very little effect and the situation in the country continued to deteriorate rapidly. The culmination of the socio-economic crisis and "hunger riots" throughout the country was the movement of serfs-robbers under the leadership of the ataman Cotton Kosolap (1603), which with great difficulty and great bloodshed was suppressed by government troops.
His weak-minded son Fedor was elevated to the throne. Under him, all power was in the hands of the regency council created during the life of Ivan IV.
In the struggle of the boyars for the leading role under the new tsar, Godunov Boris Fedorovich emerged victorious, eliminating his rivals. From 1585, he ruled Russia for 13 years on behalf of Tsar Fedor.
Boris Godunov's wife was Maria Grigoryevna Skuratova-Belskaya, daughter of the famous Malyuta Skuratov. A profitable marriage helped Boris rise to the heights of power.
The personality of Boris Godunov manifested itself as an energetic politician and a talented diplomat. He renewed the truce with Poland, returned positions from Gulf of Finland, rejected in the end Russian-Swedish war. Concerns continued about Russian colonization and consolidation of the conquered regions of the Volga region and Western Siberia. Under Godunov, Russia's ties with Georgia are expanding.
The years of Boris Godunov's reign were marked by the scope of urban and church construction. For these purposes, foreign architects and builders were invited. Among the fortresses built under Boris Godunov, the Smolensk fortress wall is called the most grandiose structure to protect the west of Russia from Poland.
In internal affairs the most prominent place belongs to the establishment of the patriarchate, which increased the prestige of Russia and allowed the separation of the Russian Orthodox Church from the Byzantine Patriarchate. Godunov in 1588 ensured that Metropolitan Job was appointed patriarch.
His church reform Boris Godunov acquired the strong support of the Russian Church in the person of Patriarch Job, who supported Godunov's policy. Having support in the clergy, Boris Fedorovich placed the military class in his favor.
The internal policy of Boris Godunov was aimed at strengthening feudal state and satisfaction of the interests of the nobility, who were generously distributed land.
The way out of the economic crisis of 1570-early 1580. Godunov saw in the strengthening of serfdom. To secure the peasants for their owners, a number of measures were taken: a population census was carried out, scribe books were opened, which received the value of a enslaving document, and decrees were issued.
Decrees of Boris Godunov:
- Decree of 1592 prohibiting the exit of peasants (cancellation of St. George's Day)
- Decree of November 1597, according to which fugitive peasants were subject to search and return to the owner within 5 years (“lesson summers”)
- Special Regulations (April 1597) on bonded serfs.
In the cities, the so-called "township buildings" were carried out, which spread the feudal order. Members of the township community were attached to the tax. urban reform Boris Godunov exacerbated social contradictions.
On May 15, 1591, he died in Uglich younger brother Fedor Ivanovich Dmitry. Then other members die royal family. Popular rumor accused Godunov of murders and even attributed to him the poisoning of Tsar Fedor himself on January 7, 1598.
In February 1598 Zemsky Sobor elects Boris Godunov as tsar's successor, and on September 1, 1599, he was crowned.
The reign of Boris Godunov began with an attempt to rapprochement with the West, realizing the backwardness of the Russian people in education in comparison with the peoples Western Europe. He instructed to recruit doctors abroad and different masters. The king even thought about the institution high school in Moscow from foreign teachers, but, not having time to put his thought into execution, he sent several young people to study in England, France, Austria. This attempt was unsuccessful, all the students remained there. Apparently, because of the Time of Troubles that followed.
The foreign policy of Boris Godunov was, one might say, timid. At that time, hostility began between Poland and Sweden, but Boris did not take advantage of such favorable circumstances to acquire at least a part of Livonia, for which so much effort was devoted. Instead of energetic measures, he resorted to futile negotiations.
In his zeal to intermarry with the European royal houses, Godunov diligently sought a bride for his son Fyodor and a groom for his daughter Xenia. But all efforts about the strength of his dynasty on the Moscow throne were in vain.
Fearing intrigues from his former rivals, Boris Godunov encouraged espionage and denunciations. The disgrace, torture, exile and even executions that had begun (contrary to the promise given during royal wedding) deprived the king of popular disposition.
In 1601-1603, crop failures befell the country, leading to terrible famine and epidemics. Entire villages, cities, towns died out. Bread speculation unfolded. Not all feudal lords could feed their servants, which is why the government allowed the transition of the peasants, in 1603 announced the release of the serfs.
There were rumors among the people that the reign of Boris Godunov was lawless, not blessed by God, and therefore the punishment of God fell upon the country for the murder of the legitimate heir to the throne.
A sharp deterioration populace became main reason peasant uprisings. One of these uprisings took place in 1603 under the command of the ataman Khlopka Kosolap. The royal army crushed the uprising. Governor Ivan Basmanov died, and Khlopko was captured and hanged.
The Time of Troubles, which began under Boris Godunov, significantly undermined the strength of his throne. Godunov died on April 13, 1605 in the midst of a struggle with False Dmitry. His young son Theodore was proclaimed king, but in the same year, during a rebellion, he was killed along with his mother.
The main result of the reign of Boris Godunov was the expansion of Russia's access to Baltic Sea. But he failed to stabilize the situation in the country and overcome the consequences of the oprichnina.
The beginning of Boris's reign seemed extremely prosperous. But that was only an appearance. Attempts to impose a feudal regime on the people ran into the dull resistance of the masses, which grew stronger from year to year. Signs of discontent could be seen everywhere - in countryside and in cities.
Tax oppression and bondage drove the peasants from the old feudal centers to the outskirts. In the depths wild field”, far beyond the defensive line, Cossack communities were formed, constantly replenished by peasants. Repelling frequent attacks from outside steppe nomads, Don Cossacks advanced to the mouth Seversky Donets and founded their capital of Strife there. The successes of the Cossack freemen caused deep anxiety in the Moscow leadership: so far Quiet Don served as a refuge for runaway peasants, the serfdom in the Center could not finally triumph. Boris understood this very well, and his policy towards the outskirts was distinguished by decisiveness and ruthlessness.
Step by step, government troops, advancing after the Cossacks, built new towns and fortifications in the middle of the "wild field". The steppe governors recruited the colonists for service and obliged them to plow the sovereign's arable land. On the next year after the coronation, Boris, as we remember, sent large military forces deep into the Cossack lands to found the city of Tsarev-Borisov. The new fortress was already hundreds of miles away from the old Russian frontiers. But from it opened shortcuts to Discord. Confrontation of the fortress with the royal name and the Cossack]! the capital had some symbolic meaning. The name of the fortress showed that the relationship with the Cossacks became for Boris not only a subject constant anxiety but also a matter of prestige.
Cossack army could not exist without the supply of ammunition and food from Russia. In an effort to subdue the Cossack freemen, Godunov banned the sale of gunpowder and food to the Don and began to persecute those who violated the strict decree. Tsar Boris was aware of the danger fraught with the seething outskirts. But his attempts to restrict the Cossack liberty turned against him. The open uprising of the Cossacks hastened the civil war.
Urban movements, having survived the rise in the 80s, then began to wane. Boris spared no expense in order to win over the tops of the township community. On the occasion of the coronation, he provided the capital's posad with all sorts of benefits. Merchants who controlled trade with the East through Astrakhan were exempted from trade duties for two years. Taxes were levied from the inhabitants of the capital. Needy widows and orphans were given money, clothes and supplies. Similar favors were awarded to the second largest settlement - Veliky Novgorod. Tsar Boris for a time "otarkhanil" his "fatherland - the great state of Veliky Novgorod", canceled monetary requisitions from the townspeople, small crafts and auctions. Novgorod merchants received the right to "travel freely" for bargaining in Moscow and the Livonian cities. The authorities liberated the township from state-owned wine trade and closed the royal taverns in the city. Godunov promised the people to make sure that "all the townspeople lived in peace, and in silence, and in a prosperous life, and there would be no crowding, and losses, and sales from no one in anything."
The policy towards cities was determined by the fact that during the years of devastation the settlements fell into decay and became depopulated. To revive city life, the authorities had to resort to emergency measures, called<.<посадского строения».
The "township building" was not reflected in the legislative material, like many other Godunov innovations. This makes it difficult to evaluate. Fragmentary data about different cities help to reveal only the general direction of Godunov's policy. In Volkhov, Korel and Rostov, the authorities made attempts to return to the settlement the old taxpayers who had gone to the landlords' lands and moved to the city yards of the feudal lords, or, as they said then, "mortgaged" for the nobles. In Kazan and Zaraisk, the administration confiscated and attributed to the tax several monastic settlements, in Vladimir it filled the settlement with peasants from the patriarchal settlement, in Kaluga it “took” quitrent peasants from the monastery and palace estates for settlement.
The revival of a solvent tax community in the cities met the interests of the treasury and, at the same time, the requirements of the influential merchant elite. The authorities did not forget about the Moscow unrest of the first years of Fedor's reign and, with the help of concessions, tried to prevent their recurrence. "Cherny Posad" suffered considerable losses due to competition from the "white slobodchiks" who lived on the urban lands of the feudal lords and had tax benefits. Therefore, the taxable tenant sought recognition of his exclusive right to engage in bidding and crafts. The government at times listened to the voice of the townspeople. In Rostov, it "besieged" merchants "because of the metropolitans and because of the monasteries and all sorts of ranks" into the township tax, and thus decisively put an end to the competition of the "white-slobodchikov".
Godunov's policy served to a certain extent as a model for the "township structure" of the middle of the 17th century. She seemed to anticipate the future. Cities were hotbeds of progress. Their revival met the deepest economic interests of the state. Boris's policy favored the development of the estate of the townspeople, but it lacked consistency. It was not authorized by law and, apparently, was carried out only in certain areas. Moscow remained the largest settlement of the country, where a significant part of the urban population of Russia lived and numerous settlements of feudal lords were located. The need for a “township building” was felt most acutely here. But in Moscow, the tsar did not want to quarrel with the influential metropolitan nobility and clergy for the sake of the interests of the township. Therefore, the reform did not receive any noticeable implementation in the capital.
The urban reform of Godunov was distinguished by a complex character. The state tried to revive the cities at the cost of attaching members of the township community to the tax. Patronizing the cities, the monarchy directed their development in a feudal direction. Carrying out the "township building", the authorities strictly distinguished between the nobles (they were called service people "according to the fatherland", or origin) and other military people (they were called people "according to the instrument" and recruited from among the townspeople). Those who did not belong to the feudal estate were taxed along with the townspeople. It is known that the “builders” of Boris “put” the city gunners and other service people “according to the instrument” in Pereyaslavl and Zaraysk on the tax. Class differences increasingly split urban society. Included in the tax-paying class, the small servicemen experienced the oppression of the feudal state in full measure. The “posad construction”, where it was carried out, exacerbated social contradictions.
Citizens made up a small part of the country's population, no more than 2%. Other people lived in tiny villages scattered over the vast expanse of the East European Plain. Godunov's policy towards the peasantry had a distinctly feudal character. The abolition of St. George's Day and the implementation of the decree on the search for fugitive peasants immensely expanded the power of the feudal landowners over the rural population. The nobles increasingly introduced corvée on their estates and increased dues. The peasants had difficulty adapting to the new order of things. They put up with the temporary cancellation of St. George's Day, while they were promised the close "sovereign weekend of summer." But as the years passed, the population became more and more convinced that they had been cruelly deceived. The peasants protested against the strengthening of serf oppression as best they could. Most often they fled from their landowners. More severe symptoms also appeared. Rumors about the increasing murder of landlords excited the country. Willy-nilly, the authorities had to think of means to calm the countryside.
Upon accession to the throne, Boris promised prosperity to both nobles and peasants. The new tsar, the leaders of the Posolsky Prikaz asserted, gave "all-Russian land relief" and "arranged the whole Russian land in mowing, and in silence, and in a prosperous life." The official explanations made a deep impression on the foreigners. One of them, the Austrian messenger Mikhail Shil, while in Moscow, wrote that the Russian peasants were in complete slavery to the nobles, but Boris intended to strictly determine the amount of duties and payments coming from each peasant household. Such a measure could delay the increase in dues and the expansion of duties. But nothing is known about its practical implementation.
In connection with the coronation of Boris, the authorities announced tax breaks. The serving foreigner Konrad Bussov wrote that the tsar exempted all his land from taxes for a period of a year. However, Bussov wrote from other people's words - his story can hardly be trusted. In fact, the government pursued a differentiated policy in relation to various groups of the taxable population. The large rural population was able to take advantage of tax benefits to a much lesser extent than the small urban population. The advantage was given to areas that were in dire need of them. Thus, the ruined Korelsky county, shortly before returned by Sweden to Russia, was exempted from taxes for 10 years. In response to the long-term requests of the Siberian Voguls,1 Boris ordered that yasak be laid down from them for a year, and in the future taxation should be equalized, “how can anyone be paid without a husband in the future, so that from now on it will be wealthy and stable and without need.” Among the Siberian Tatars and Ostyaks, only the old and "thin" """ yasak people received relief.
The benefits granted to certain localities quickly exhausted themselves. The peasants groaned under the weight of the sovereign's taxes. The tax burden ruined the village.
At the beginning of the 17th century, agriculture fell into decay under the influence of natural disasters. In agrarian Russia, agricultural production was characterized by extreme instability and depended to a great extent on weather conditions. The study of climate change led scientists to the conclusion that over the past millennium, the largest cooling occurred in the second half of the 16th - early 17th centuries.
The deterioration of climatic conditions coincided in a number of countries with a violation of weather cycles. For every decade, there were usually about one or two bad and one extremely unfavorable climatic year. As a rule, bad years alternated with good ones, and the peasants compensated for the losses from the next harvest. But when disasters ruined the harvest for two consecutive years, small-scale peasant production collapsed.
At the beginning of the 17th century, Russia experienced the consequences of a general cooling and a violation of the weather cycle. Long rains prevented the ripening of bread during the cold summer of 1601. Early frosts completed the trouble. The peasants used immature, ".winter" seeds,
to sow winter. As a result, in the winter fields, bread either
did not germinate at all, or gave poor shoots. Crops, for
which farmers placed all their hopes, were
destroyed by frost in 1602. In 1603 the village did not
than to sow the fields. There was a terrible famine. .
As usual, prices rose in the spring. There is nothing to be surprised that already in the spring of 1601 "bread was expensive." | A year later, rye began to sell 6 times more expensive. Then this price has risen three times more. Not only the poor, but also the middle strata of the population could not buy such bread.
Having exhausted food supplies, the starving began to eat cats and dogs, and then began to eat grass, linden bark, and human corpses. Starvation decimated the population throughout the country. Corpses littered the roads. In the cities, they barely had time to take them out to the field, where they buried them in large pits. In Moscow alone, during the famine, the authorities buried 120,000 dead in three large "skudelnitsa" (fraternal cemeteries). This figure is given in their notes by foreigners (I am Marzharet) and Russian writers (A. Palitsyn). Contemporaries believed that "a third of the kingdom of Moscow" died out during the famine years.
To the credit of the Godunov administration, it should be noted that from the first days it assessed the danger and tried by all means to prevent mass starvation. The object of its concern was, first of all, plantings. In Solvychegodsk, the authorities tried by a special decree to introduce uniform fixed prices for bread, half with market. The townsman community received permission to requisition stocks of grain, paying off the owners at fixed prices. Bread buyers were ordered to be beaten with a whip, and for the resumption of speculation put in jail. Mer: against grain speculation in city markets, apparently, were of a nationwide character. They began to be introduced in November 1601. At that time, the population still had some stocks of bread.
Why were the authorities in such a hurry? It is not difficult to explain -/go. Godunov's generation survived a two-year famine during the years of the oprichnina. The country did not overcome the consequences of the great ruin until the end of the 16th century.
In his manifestos, the new king resorted to a language that none of the previous rulers spoke to the people. The townspeople were convinced that Boris rules the earth fairly, "to all people to silence, and to peace, and privilege", that he, by his mercy, protects them in everything, "searching" "for all people of all people, useful", so that
Having no real reserves to feed the village, the government tried to use social levers. For many years, the enslaved peasants lived in hopes for the “sovereign weekend of summer”. With his decree on the search for fugitives, Boris dealt a mortal blow to these hopes. But three years later, he showed great flexibility, temporarily deviating from the accepted course. On November 28, 1601, the country learned about the restoration of the peasant output on St. George's Day for a period of a year.
It should not be thought that the famine itself could lead to such a sharp social turn. By the autumn of 1601, the consequences of the first crop failure did not fully reveal themselves. The population has not yet exhausted the old reserves. A three-year famine was ahead, and no one could have foreseen its magnitude. Godunov was not afraid of famine, but of social upheavals, long predicted by sober observers. The peasantry remained a mute witness to the change of dynasty. No one thought to ask his opinion in the matter of the royal election. No matter how insignificant Tsar Fedor looked, the people believed him. The administration of all ranks from top to bottom ruled in his name. All her orders came from the legitimate sovereign. Boris was not a born king. How could he then claim the place of an "earthly god"? The unhurried peasant mind did not immediately manage to find an answer to such a difficult question. Boris tried to win the affection of the rural population with one blow. His decree was the best fit for this purpose. In the name of Fedor, the peasants were deprived of their will. Now Boris restored St. George's Day and took on the role of liberator. His decree in understandable words explained to the peasants how merciful the “great sovereign” was to them, who “granted all (!) of his state from tax and from sale, ordered the peasants to give a way out.”
The restoration of St. George's Day came into conflict with the interests of the petty nobility. In fact, the laws of 1601-1602 temporarily restored peasant transitions only on the lands of the provincial nobility, lower officers and minor clerks. Decrees categorically confirmed the serfdom of the peasants,
“In all the lands there is an abundance of grain, an undisturbed life and undamaged peace for all.”
The government spared no expense to fight the famine. Godunov immediately sent 20,000 rubles to Smolensk for distribution to the people. In the capital, he ordered that even larger sums of money be distributed to the needy, and in addition, he organized public works to feed the population. But cash distributions did not reach the goal. Money was losing value day by day, the government penny could no longer feed a family and even one person. Meanwhile, rumors about royal alms spread throughout the country, and the people poured into the capital in droves, which increased the famine there. Boris conducted a search for grain stocks throughout the state and ordered grain from the royal granaries to be sold to the people. But stocks depleted pretty quickly. A lot of grain, sold at fixed prices, nevertheless fell into the hands of grain buyers. The new tsar, who tried to fight grain speculation, even ordered the execution of several metropolitan bakers who cheated in baking bread. But all this did not help much.
Government measures, perhaps, would have been successful in a short-term famine. Repeated crop failure nullified all his efforts. The monasteries and boyars, who had accumulated some stocks of grain, remained deaf to the calls of the authorities. In anticipation of worse times, rich peasants buried their bread in the ground. The government tried here and there to requisition grain, but it lacked firmness and consistency. Boris did not dare to enter into a serious conflict with the richest of his subjects. Attempts to curb the frenzied speculation of the merchants also failed.
Godunov patronized the settlements in order to maintain the main source of cash receipts for the treasury. The multimillion-strong peasantry turned out to be left to their own fate. Even in the palace volosts, the actual patrimony of the Godunovs, the matter was limited to the sale of "old" bread to the peasants on credit on bonded receipts. Palace clerks in the village of Kushalina reported to Moscow that many needy peasants came there and "stand in the streets with their wives and children, they died of hunger and chills." On their report, the order imposed the following resolution: "Order the poor to warm and lend bread to whom you can trust."
Godunov avoided such steps that could irritate the nobility, and at the same time he was not afraid of irritating the petty nobility - the most numerous stratum of the ruling class. Contrary to the opinion of S. F. Platonov, Boris cannot be considered a noble tsar who completely connected his fate with the interests of the front "service class.
Having made temporary concessions to the peasantry, the authorities tried as far as possible to smooth out the unfavorable impression made on the small landowners. It could be expected that with the restoration of St. George's Day, the peasants would rush to the lands of privileged landowners who had the opportunity to provide loans and benefits to newcomers. The government averted this threat by forbidding rich landowners to invite peasants to their place. As for the provincial nobles, they received the right to take out at once no more than one or two peasants from one estate. Such an order contained a certain economic meaning.
Under Boris Godunov, Russia for the first time experienced a general famine in the conditions of enslavement of the peasants, which created special difficulties for small-peasant production. For a century, St. George's Day played the role of a kind of economic regulator. In case of crop failure, the peasants immediately left the landowners, who refused to help them, and went to the landowners, who were ready to lend them seeds and food. Under the conditions of enslavement, poor estates turned into a kind of trap: the peasant did not receive any help, nor did he have the right to leave. Godunov's laws opened the doors of a trap for the peasants. At the same time, they prevented the enterprising nobles from bringing many peasants from their neighboring estates, for whose help they did not have the means.
The government allowed transitions within medium and small estates, guided primarily by financial considerations. Only a way out and help would save the peasants of the distressed estates and prevent the desolation of the tax, which provided state income. Since the small landlords made up the majority of the feudal class, it should be recognized that a significant part of the peasant population got a chance to take advantage of the decree of Tsar Boris. Under certain conditions, the restoration of St. George's Day would help small-peasant production survive the lean years, would defuse the discontent of the enslaved peasantry. But did it really happen? There was a gulf between the issuance of the law and its implementation.
The peasants interpreted the favorable appeal of the new king to them in their own way. They refused to pay “taxes and sales”, taxes and dues, moved to lands convenient for them, not paying attention to the fact that a good half of the lands in the state remained reserved. The reaction of the peasants was so stormy that when the decree of 1602 was reissued, the words about granting an exit "from tax and from sales" were excluded from it.
As for the landlords, they resisted with all their might concessions in favor of the serfs, even limited and temporary ones. The resistance of the nobles reached such proportions that the authorities included in the text of the decree of 1602 items designed to protect the peasants from landlord violence and robbery. “It would be strong for the children of the boyar peasants. They didn’t keep them behind them, the law said, and they didn’t make any sales to them, and whoever oppresses the peasants robs and doesn’t let him out because of himself, and so be in great disgrace from us. The verbal threats of disgrace could not frighten the nobles, as soon as it came to income. Without peasants, a beggarly sum was waiting for a small landowner. For its part, the feudal state did not think of any serious sanctions against the noble masses, which constituted its social support. Attempts to alleviate the situation of the starving village, apparently, failed.
In 1603, the St. George's Day law was not confirmed. Boris Godunov acknowledged the failure of his peasant policy. The nobility appreciated the king's measures, which fully met her interests. But among the petty nobility, the popularity of the Godunov dynasty began to decline rapidly. This circumstance greatly contributed to the success of the impostor, whose invasion unleashed a civil war in the country.
A. S. Pushkin put into the mouth of Boris Godunov bitter complaints about the ingratitude of the people:
I thought my people
In contentment, in glory to calm.
With bounties to win him love
But put aside the empty cookie:
Living power is hateful for the mob,
She only knows how to love the dead...
In life, Boris really failed to win people's sympathy, despite all his charity.
The famine hardened the population to extreme limits. Armed gangs appeared in different parts of the country. On the main roads there was no aisle or driveway from them.
The largest armed detachment, headed by a certain Cotton, operated almost at the very walls of Moscow. A. A. Zimin suggested that the performances of the lower classes in 1602-1603 marked the beginning of a peasant war, which immediately engulfed many counties of the state.
The documents of the Discharge Order - the main military department of Russia - at first glance confirmed his assumption. During the year - from September 1602 to September 1603 - the authorities sent at least two dozen nobles to cities such as Vladimir, Ryazan, Vyazma, Mozhaisk, Volokolamsk, Kolomna, Rzhev, entrusting them with the fight against the robbers operating there. The idea arose that the performances of the “robbers” in different counties were part of a general movement, the apogee of which was the actions of Khlopok in the vicinity of the capital. After the name of the leader, the movement was called the “Cotton uprising”.
Critical analysis of sources completely destroys this picture. The truth was discovered thanks to a simple trick - checking the official appointments of the nobles who fought against the robbers. It turned out that the nobles went to different cities for a short time and immediately returned to Moscow. Their journeys began in September 1602 and had nothing to do with Cotton's rebellion in the autumn of 1603.
It was during this period that the country experienced famine. By 1602-1603, the disaster reached unheard of proportions. Hoping for help from the treasury, many starving peasants from the Moscow region and a dozen other counties poured into Moscow, but starvation awaited them there. The government made desperate efforts to supply the capital. The officials sent to the provinces tried to collect bread bit by bit wherever possible. But their efforts did not lead to the desired results. The stocks of grain in the country were almost completely exhausted, and what could be prepared in the counties could not be delivered to Moscow. Numerous gangs of “robbers” appeared on the roads, who repulsed and robbed carts with food heading to the capital. The actions of the "robbers" aggravated the people's disasters, doomed thousands of refugee peasants to death.
The critical situation determined the nature of government measures. To ensure unhindered delivery of goods to Moscow, the authorities sent the nobles to the main roads - Vladimir, Smolensk, Ryazan, connecting the city with various counties. "Robbies" acted not only in the provinces, but also in the capital. On May 14, 1603, Boris Godunov instructed the most prominent members of the Boyar Duma to maintain order in Moscow. Moscow was divided into 11 districts. The Kremlin became the central district, two districts were formed in Kitay-gorod, eight districts in the White and Wooden "cities". The district was headed by the boyars Prince N. R. Trubetskoy, Prince V. V. Golitsyn, M. G. Saltykov, roundabouts P. N. Sheremetov, V. P. Morozov, M. M. Saltykov, I. F. Basmanov and three Godunov. The boyars, together with their assistants - noble heads - regularly made detours in the quarters assigned to them.
The measures described were extraordinary. They were a direct consequence of the top critical situation that had developed in Moscow by 1603. The possibilities of helping the starving were exhausted, and the distribution of money to the poor was completely stopped. In the worst situation were the refugees, who were almost more than the indigenous inhabitants of Moscow. Refugees filled squares and wastelands - "hollow places", conflagrations, ravines and meadows. They were forced to live in the open air or in hastily knocked together booths and huts. Deprived of help, they were doomed to a painful death. Every morning, wagons drove through the streets of Moscow, in which the corpses of people who had died during the night were taken away.
The threat of starvation pushed desperate people to robbery and robbery. The chroniclers very accurately described the situation at the height of the famine, when
“Great violence arose, many rich houses were plundered, and smashed, and set on fire, and everywhere there was great fear and increasing iniquity.” The poor attacked the mansions of the rich, set fires to make it easier to rob, attacked the carts as soon as they appeared on the streets of the capital. The markets have ceased to function. As soon as the merchant appeared on the street, he was instantly surrounded by a crowd, and he had to think about only one thing: how to escape from the crush. The starving took away the bread and immediately ate it.
Robberies and robberies in Moscow, in their scale, apparently, surpassed everything that was happening in the county towns and on the roads. This is what prompted Boris to assign responsibility for maintaining order in the capital to the highest state body - the Boyar Duma. The boyars were instructed to use any military and police measures so that “in Moscow, along all the streets and alleys and hollow places and near cities, there were no battles and robberies, and murders, and tatba and fires, and all kinds of theft were not some things.” While small gangs of “robbers” were operating in the vicinity of the capital, the government was much more afraid of an uprising in the city than an attack by gangs from outside. But the situation changed when the "robbery" united in a large detachment. Khlopko was its leader. According to contemporaries, runaway boyar serfs prevailed among the "robbery". The nickname of the chieftain indicates that he was also a serf. In September 1603, Khlopko acted on the Smolensk and Tver roads. At that time in Moscow, order in the western quarters "along Tverskaya Street" was guarded by the governor Ivan Basmanov. Relying on his own strength, he went out of the city gates and tried to capture Cotton. Five hundred rebels took the fight. Basmanov was killed. Only having received reinforcements from Moscow, government troops defeated the rebels. Cotton and other prisoners were brought to the capital and hanged there.
In the speeches of 1602-1603, it is difficult to draw a dividing line between robbery robberies and hungry riots of the poor. The social character of the movement was manifested primarily in the fact that the violence generated by the famine was turned against the rich. At the height of the Khlopok uprising, on August 16, 1603, Tsar Boris issued a decree on the immediate release of all serfs who were illegally deprived of food by their masters. The tsar's decree confirms the words of contemporaries that it was primarily boyar serfs who went to robbery.
Among the dependent population, combat serfs were the only group that had weapons and combat experience. The events of 1603 showed that, under certain conditions, combat serfs can become the core of an insurrectionary movement. This circumstance forced the authorities to make concessions to the serfs to the detriment of the interests of the nobles.
After the defeat of Cotton, many rebels fled to the outskirts - to the Chernigov-Seversk land and to the Lower Volga region. A direct continuation of the performance of the "robbers" in the Center was the robbery of the Cossacks on the lower Volga in 1604. All these events were harbingers of the impending civil war.
At the beginning of the XVII century. Russia survived a three-year famine. The disaster had a significant impact on the development of the crisis in Russian society. The problem of the "great famine" was reflected in historiography 1 . VI Koretsky subjected this problem to a special study 2 . However, some issues need further consideration.
A study of secular climate fluctuations shows that the most significant cooling in Europe (over the last thousand years) falls at the beginning of the 17th century. 3 In countries with more favorable soil and climatic conditions and a high level of agriculture for their time, the noted fluctuations did not lead to serious economic consequences. However, in a number of countries in Northern and Eastern Europe, the cold snap caused a genuine agrarian disaster. The summer of 1601 was cold and damp. Over a vast area from Pskov to Nizhny Novgorod, the rains did not stop for 10-12 weeks 4 . The bread in the fields is not ripe. Because of need and hunger, the peasants began harvesting unripe bread - "zhita for bread", but they did not have time to reap the rye. "On Semyon's Day" - September 1, 1601 - frosts began. In some places, frosts were noted even earlier - in late July and mid-August 5 . With the onset of cold weather, the rains gave way to heavy snowfalls. Peasant fields and gardens were covered with deep snowdrifts. Since October, frosts and snowstorms have intensified. The Dnieper froze in the middle reaches and upper reaches, "and they traveled along it as if in the middle of winter." In cold weather, farmers built fires in the fields, raked snowdrifts and tried to save the remnants of the harvest 6 .
After a harsh winter, the warm spring of 1602 came. Winter grains where the fields were sown with old seeds, gave abundant shoots. But in the middle of spring, as a chronicler from South Belarus recorded, a “great, terrible frost” broke out and beat bread and other plantings “in bloom”. The same chronicler recorded a rumor, “allegedly in the middle of summer in Moscow there was great snow and frost, for many weeks they rode sledges in summer” 7 .
The rumors were exaggerated. But in Great Russia, spring and summer frosts brought even worse disasters to the peasants than in southern Belarus. Having lost winter crops, the villagers tried to re-sow the fields using "winter rye" rescued from under the snow. However, new crops did not sprout - instead of rye, "the old ones were born: who sowed a hundred measures of corn, and he collected one measure ..." 8 .
In the spring of 1603, the greenery in the fields did not die. The summer turned out to be "Velmi" dry and hot. The year was favorable for agricultural work. But the peasants had long ago used up their grain reserves. They had no seeds, they had nothing to eat.
After the first crop failure, the price of bread rose to 1-2 rubles. per quarter, by the end of the famine - up to 3-4 rubles. According to the Chronograph edition of 1617, before the Troubles, rye was sold for 3-4 kopecks. for a quarter. Taking these data as initial, V. I. Koretsky concluded that during the famine, prices "increased 80-120 times!". However, it must be borne in mind that the data of the Chronograph are random. As A. G. Mankov showed, a steady increase in grain prices occurred already in the second half of the 16th century. During the years 1594-1597. the authorities of Novgorod sold confiscated rye at a price equal to 15 kopecks, or 30 dollars, per quarter. In comparison with the mentioned average price, rye rose in price during the years of famine by 20 times, compared with cheap prices - even more. Curious information about prices is reported by serving foreigners Yakov Marzharet and Konrad Bussov, who owned estates in the central districts and were aware of the grain trade. According to Marzharet, a measure of rye, which used to cost 15 soles (6 kopecks, or 12 money), during the years of famine was sold for almost 20 livres, or 3 rubles. Bread prices, wrote Bussov, remained at a high level until 1604, when rye kad was sold 25 times more expensive than in normal times 9 . Thus, both Marzharet and Bussow equally believed that bread had risen in price by about 25 times.
Beginning in the spring of 1602, the population began to die of hunger. People ate cats and dogs, chaff and hay, roots and grass. Cases of cannibalism were noted. In the cities, they did not have time to pick up dead bodies. On rural roads, corpses became the prey of predatory animals and birds 10 .
Some contemporaries tried to determine the total number of victims of the "great famine" in Russia. Not later than the second half of 1602, a resident of the Vazh land wrote in the margins of the liturgical book of the Chetya Menaion for October: “And people were dying of hunger in the city, and in the settlements, and in the volosts, two shares, and a third remained” 11. It seemed to a resident of the devastated northern places that two-thirds of the inhabitants throughout the country had died out.
It was easier to live in the south, and here the chroniclers determined the number of deaths at one third. An unknown resident of Pochep wrote: “Summer 7110 7111 (1601 - 1603 - R. S.) smooth over the whole earth and throughout the whole kingdom of Moscow under the faithful Tsar Boris Fedorovich of all Russia and under the most holy patronyarch Ieva, and a third of the kingdom of Moscow died of starvation ”12. These records do not contain accurate information. They captured only the feeling of horror of the eyewitnesses, struck by the scale of the disaster.
Even the government did not have accurate data on the number of deaths throughout the country. The "reckoning" of the dead was systematically carried out only within the capital. Specially assigned teams picked up corpses on the streets every day and buried them in huge mass graves. Tsar Boris ordered that the dead be dressed in state shrouds, and, apparently, the clerks kept count of the canvas released from the treasury 13 . “And for two summers and four months,” Avraamy Palitsyn wrote, “those who, by order of the tsar, counted 127,000 cellars in three skudelnits, only in Moscow alone.” A close figure - 120,000 - is reported by Yakov Marzharet 14 .
At the beginning of the XVII century. the population of Moscow did not exceed 50 thousand people. It follows that the bulk of the dead were refugees. Eyewitnesses testified to the fact that starving people from many towns and villages near Moscow were looking for salvation in the capital 15 .
On the eve of the famine, Godunov organized a system of public charity, establishing almshouses in Moscow. In order to provide income for those in need, the tsar ordered the expansion of construction work in the capital 20 .
During the years of the "great famine" the doctrine of the common welfare was put to the test. The authorities spared no expense to help the starving. Faced with unheard-of high prices, the Moscow population lived in hopes of selling cheap bread from the royal granaries. Muscovite D. Yakovlev, in a letter dated March 18, 1602, informed his relatives: “... mugs are expensive in Moscow, but they say that the tsar’s mug will be half a half-and-a-half bucks…” The treasury supplied cheap bread to the market, the starving were distributed free of charge loaves. Distributions in 1601-1602. was in charge of the Order of the Grand Parish. On behalf of the authorities, the son of the boyar S.I. Yazykov "weighed bread and rolls on Tverskaya and Nikitskaya and at lazy markets." He handed over the handouts to the order. In addition to supplies, the starving could receive small cash benefits. Every day, on four large squares of the capital, officials distributed to the poor on a weekday a half, on Sunday for money, that is, twice. As eyewitnesses noted, the treasury spent 300-400 rubles on the poor. and more per day 21 . In other words, up to 60,000-80,000 hungry people received assistance every day.
Similar measures were taken in Smolensk, Novgorod, Pskov and other cities. “I know,” Marzharet wrote, “that he (Boris. - R. S.) sent to Smolensk with one of my acquaintances 20,000 rubles. Such were the scale of public expenditures for the needs of the “nationwide multitude”. However, it must be borne in mind that the authorities provided assistance mainly to the urban population. The benefits provided to the countryside could not be compared with the charity in the cities 22 . Peasant taxes were so important for the state budget that the authorities did not consider it possible to abandon them, as was done during the coronation of Boris. Not having sufficient funds, the treasury did not try to feed the millions of starving peasants.
Contemporaries differently assessed the importance of measures to help the starving. Issac Massa, who frankly blackened the deeds of Boris Godunov, believed that the distribution of alms only increased the famine in Moscow, because needy people from all over the district reached out to the capital. Moreover, charitable money fell into the wrong hands: they were stolen by clerks, etc. A completely different assessment of Godunov's measures was given by Russian chroniclers, who avoided a biased attitude. One contemporary described the state of affairs in Moscow in such terms: “And in Moscow and within its limits they ate horse meat, and dogs, and cats, and people, but the poor still hold on to the royal alms ...” 23 Help for the starving poor really had invaluable value.
In an effort to prevent the growth of high prices in the cities, the Godunov government undertook the first attempt in Russian history to regulate prices by the state. In the autumn of 1601, the townspeople of Sol-Vychegodsk appealed to Moscow with a complaint that local merchants had raised the price of bread to a ruble per quarter or more. On November 3, 1601, Tsar Boris ordered the introduction of a single price for bread in Sol-Vychegodsk, which is obligatory for everyone. The state price was half the market price. To put an end to speculation, the decree introduced the rationed sale of bread. It was forbidden to sell more than 2-4 quarters of bread in one hand. Posad "world" received the right to take away grain surpluses from merchants and without delay put them on retail sale. Merchants who refused to sell bread at the state price were subject to imprisonment and were subject to a 5-ruble fine.
The government did not want to resort to extreme measures against wealthy merchants who had large grain reserves. The punishment did not deprive violators of trading profits.
Even those people who were subject to imprisonment were to receive all the money received from the sale of the bread confiscated from them.
Watching over the interests of the merchant elite, the authorities showed much less leniency towards petty speculators. They were threatened with "commercial execution", i.e. punishment with a whip 24 .
Some contemporaries expressed the idea that in a country as abundant in grain as Russia, people could have avoided the unheard-of disasters of famine. According to Isaac Massa, there was more available stock of grain than was required to feed the entire people during the four years of famine. Stocks of rot from long-term lying and were not used by the owners even for sale to the starving 25 .
The question arises. Can evidence of this kind be trusted? To answer this question, let us turn to the monastic documentation. The monasteries were the largest holders of grain stocks. On the basis of monastic books of the late 16th - early 17th centuries. N. A. Gorskaya established that the Joseph-Volokolamsky Monastery had the largest grain surpluses. The monastery received the vast majority of the grain from its own plowing, some of it was put on sale by the monks. In lean years, the Joseph-Volokolamsk Monastery either had a minimal surplus or bought the missing bread. After the shortage of crops in 1590, the cellar of the monastery calculated that 12,000 quarters of rye would be needed for the next year for “everyday use” by monks, loans to peasants, etc., while there are only 1,982 quarters in the bins. With an average harvest in 1599, the monks allocated 7362 quarters of rye to cover the annual needs, after which they were left with 7792 quarters of rye from the old stocks and the new crop, threshed and unthreshed in the fields in the fields. Similarly, oats and other spring crops were spent. Of the 23,718 quarters, 13,594 quarters were allocated for seeds and monastic use. A smaller part of the "new and old zhit" remained in the remainder. Oats from the harvest of 1596/97 were stored in stacks in the fields, but their share in the total stock was small 26 .
The Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery was one of the largest feudal landowners in Russia. His lands were not distinguished by fertility, and the monastery received the necessary bread mainly from its peasants. In 1601, the available stocks of rye and oats in the monastery did not exceed 30 thousand quarters. In view of the crop failure, the newly harvested grain accounted for less than 12,000 quarters. The annual consumption of the monastery, taking into account the amendment of N.A. Gorskaya, was more than 10 thousand quarters of rye and oats. Thus, the monks had in surplus as much bread as they needed to meet their own needs for only two or three years 27 .
On the eve of the famine, the grain reserves of the Vologda Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery amounted to 2834 quarters of rye and oats. A year later, they were down to a low of 942 quarters. The monks were forced to start buying grain 28 .
Contemporaries had every reason to reproach the monks, wealthy laymen and merchants for speculating in bread and enriching themselves at the expense of the starving people. Speculation aggravated the distress of the population. But they were not the main cause of the disastrous famine in Russia at the beginning of the 17th century. The harsh climate, the scarcity of soils, the feudal system of agriculture made it impossible to create such grain reserves that could provide the country with food in the conditions of a three-year crop failure.
Isaac Massa, Godunov's ill-wisher, argued that the tsar could, but did not strictly order noble gentlemen, monks and other rich people who had full granaries of bread, to sell their bread. The patriarch himself, having a large supply of food, allegedly announced that he did not want to sell grain, which over time could earn even more money 29 . In the literature one can find multiple references to the above words of Massa. However, their reliability is questionable. The “patriarchal speech” composed by Massa is imbued with a commercial spirit, characteristic of a Dutch merchant, but not of Job. Boris's closest assistant could not act as an open supporter of grain speculation when the authorities took all measures to curb them.
According to Peter Petrey, Boris issued a strict order addressed to landowners to sell bread at half price. As Konrad Bussov wrote, Tsar Boris appealed to "princes, boyars and monasteries to take the people's calamity to heart, put up their stocks of grain and sell them somewhat cheaper than then requested ...". The royal messengers went to all parts of the country to unsubscribe to the treasury the old bread that was stored in the fields in stacks. The confiscated bread was sent to state granaries. To prevent the mass death of the poor, Godunov ordered "in all cities to open royal granaries and sell thousands of kadei daily at half price" 30 . (Apparently, fixed government prices were half the market price.)
The government understood that it was impossible to do away with high prices by decrees alone, and tried to use economic means. Trade in cheap state-owned bread could stabilize the grain market if the rise in prices turned out to be short-lived. But the famine turned out to be much longer than expected. Towards the end, the disasters reached such monstrous proportions that the authorities were forced to admit their impotence and stopped selling cheap bread and distributing money to the poor, so as not to attract new crowds of refugees to the city.
So, at the beginning of the XVII century. the government for the first time in Russian history tried to implement a broad program of assistance to the starving people. Boris tried to justify new measures with the help of new ideas. As stated in the decree on the introduction of fixed prices in Sol-Vychegodsk, Tsar Boris “protects the peasant (Orthodox. - R. S.) people in everything”, regrets about all the “Orthodox peasantry”, is looking for “useful for all of you - all the people people - useful, so that ... there will be an abundance of grain in all our lands, undisturbed life and unharmed peace for everyone evenly” 31.
Recognition that not only the top, but also the bottom of society - the "popular multitude" - have an equal right ("everyone has equal") to grain abundance, prosperity and peace, was one of the important principles of Boris Godunov's "zemstvo policy".
New ideas to a certain extent reflected the crisis situation that developed in the state at the beginning of the 17th century. The country was on the verge of major social upheavals. The most far-sighted politicians felt the approach of the catastrophe and tried to prevent it.
1 See: Karamzin N.M. History of the Russian State. T. XI. SPb., 1843. S. 65-68; Solovyov S. M. History of Russia since ancient times. Book. IV. pp. 399-400; Platonov S.F. Moscow famine 1601-1603. // Artel business. 1921. No. 9-16; Smirnov I. I. Bolotnikov's uprising. pp. 63-11.
2 See: Koretsky V. I. Formation of serfdom and the first Peasant War in Russia. pp. 117-148.
3 See: E. Le Roy Ladurie, Climate history since 1000, Leningrad, 1971, pp. 172, 212.
4 The legend of Avraamy Palitsyn. S. 105; PSRL. T. 32. M., 1975. S. 187.
5 See: Koretsky V. I. Formation of serfdom... S. 118-121.
6 PSRL. T. 32. S. 188.
7 Ibid. The chronicler, writing down weather data from year to year, only once noted the death of the crop "in bloom" - in late spring around 1602.
8 Cit. by: Koretsky V. I. Formation of serfdom ... S. 126.
9 Ibid. S. 128; Mankov A.G. Prices and their movement in the Muscovite state of the 16th century. M.; L., 1951. S. 30; Agrarian history of the North-West of Russia: Novgorod Pyatina. S. 23; Marzharet J. Notes. S. 188; Bussov K. Moscow Chronicle. S. 97.
10 The legend of Avraamy Palitsyn. S. 106; Bussov K. Moscow Chronicle. S. 97; Marzharet J. Notes. pp. 188-189; Massa I. Brief news about Muscovy at the beginning of the 17th century. S. 62.
11 Quoted. Quoted from: Koretsky V. I. Formation of serfdom ... S. 127.
12 Ibid. pp. 131 - 132.
13 As it appears in A. Palitsyn’s “History” according to the Solovetsky list, Boris, “caring for the dead, ordered the bailiffs to wash everyone and give shrouds and conscripts and put ports from the royal treasury, and carry them to bury them with his royal treasury” (GPB, OR, collection of the Solovetsky Monastery, No. 43/1502, sheet 154v. For more information about the Solovetsky list, see: Solodkin Ya. G. The Solovetsky edition of the history of Avraamy Palitsyn // Literature of Ancient Russia. 88).
14 The legend of Avraamy Palitsyn. S. 106; PSRL. T. 14. S. 55; Marzharet J. Notes. S. 188.
15 Notes by S. Nemoevsky // Titov A. A. Slavic and Russian manuscripts belonging to I. A. Vakhromeev. Issue. 6. M., 1907. S. 37; Massa I. Brief message ... S. 61; The story of Avraamy Palitsyn. S. 105.
16 AAE. T. II. St. Petersburg, 1836, p. 14; Ancient Russian vivliofika. 2nd ed. Part VII. M., 1788. S. 50.
17 The legend of Avraamy Palitsyn. S. 104.
18 Bussov K. Moscow Chronicle. S. 90; cf.: M. Shil's report of 1598 // CHOIDR. 1875. Book. 2. S. 17; Materials on the Time of Troubles, collected by V. N. Aleksandrenko // Antiquity and novelty. 1911. Book. 15. S. 188.
19 TsGADA, f. 198, op. 2, Miller portfolios, No. 478, part 1, sheet. 12; No. 479, l. 3; f. 98, op. 1, 1598, No. 1, l. 201.
20 PSRL. T. 14. S. 55; T. 34. S. 202.
21 Morozov B.N. Private letter of the beginning of the 17th century. // History of the Russian language. Monuments of the XI-XVIII centuries. M., 1982. S. 290; Local handbook XVII p. / Ed. Yu. V. Tatishchev. Vilna, 1910, p. 6; PSRL. T. 34. S. 203; Massa I. Brief message ... S. 61; Bussov K. Moscow Chronicle. S. 97.
22 Marzharet J. Notes. S. 189; Anpilogov G.N. New documents about Russia in the late 16th - early 17th centuries. S. 432.
23 Massa I. Brief message ... S. 61; BAN, OR, coll. Sreznevsky, No. 119. l. 21 vol.
24 Decree of Boris Godunov of November 3, 1601 // Semevsky M. I. Historical and legal acts of the 16th and 17th centuries. // Chronicle of the studies of the Archeographic Commission. Issue. IX. SPb., 1893. S. 55-57.
25 Massa I. Brief message ... S. 61; cf .: The legend of Avraamy Palitsyn. S. 106; Bussov K. Moscow Chronicle. S. 98.
26 Gorskaya N. A. Marketability of grain farming in the farms of the monastic estates of the center of the Russian state by the end of the 16th - beginning of the 17th centuries. // Yearbook on agrarian history of Eastern Europe. 1962. Minsk, 1964. S. 134-136; Estate economic books of the 16th century. Issue. III. M.; L., 1976. S. 455, 473, 481, 487, 511-514.
27 See: Nikolsky N. Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery and its organization until the second quarter of the 17th century. T. I. Issue. 2. St. Petersburg, 1910. App. C. I-XIV; see also: Prokofieva L. S. Estate farming in the 17th century. M.; L., 1959. S. 9-10; Gorskaya N. A. Decree. op. pp. 124-125.
28 Archive LOII AS USSR, f. 271, op. 2, no. 21, l. 1-2 rev., 8 rev., 12, 20, 32. In the documents of the Staritsky Assumption Monastery of 1607, it is noted that the stock of “standing” and milk-milk bread accumulated by the monastery after the fruitful years (1598-1599) “was spent in hunger years ”(Tverskaya Starina. 1911. No. 12. P. 20). This fact was first noted by Ya. G. Solodkin.
29 Massa I. Brief message ... S. 60-61.
30 Petrey P. History of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. M., 1867. S. 193; Bussov K. Moscow Chronicle. S. 98.
31 Semevsky M. I. Historical and legal acts of the XVI and XVII centuries. S. 57.
Russia at the end of the 16th century: on the eve of the Troubles
End of the Rurik dynasty.
In the late 1570s - early 1580s. Ivan the Terrible was ill a lot. In his 50s, he looked like a very old man. He was bald, his eyes were watering, his hands were shaking, his body began to swell. Nightmares haunted the king. He prayed a lot, asked God to forgive him his sins - murders and other crimes. Whole lists commemorated the people whom he sent to the next world.
At the end of his life, Ivan IV had three sons. The eldest, 28-year-old Ivan Ivanovich, was full of strength and energy. He showed himself to be brave on the battlefield and active in state affairs. Ivan the Terrible was furious at his son's independent and bold judgments. Quarrels often broke out between them. Ivan IV interfered in his personal life, insulted the wife of Ivan Ivanovich. Once he even beat her. The heir stood up for the honor of his wife and tried to grab his father's hands. Then he inflicted a mortal blow on his son with his heavy, iron-bound staff. After some time, Ivan Ivanovich died. Thus, the Terrible Tsar himself cut down the Rurik dynasty in the bud, about which he talked a lot as a divine dynasty, ascending in kinship with Emperor Augustus.
His next son, the sickly and pious Fedor, had no children. The third son, a young Dmitry, was born from the seventh wife of the tsar, the noblewoman Maria Nagoya. After the death of Ivan IV in 1584, the royal throne passed to the 27-year-old Fedor. He was a quiet and God-fearing man. He hated cruelty and violence, he spent his time in prayers, reading books, in conversations with learned monks.
Behind Fedor, between the favorites and various boyar groups 
Uppas began a fierce struggle for power. The assertive, intelligent and merciless Boris Godunov came out the winner in it. The rapid rise of Boris was facilitated by the fact that his sister Irina was the wife of Tsar Fedor. Pushing aside rivals, Godunov managed to concentrate in his hands the main levers of state administration.
The almighty boyar saw a danger for himself in the young prince Dmitry. After all, someone could have come up with the idea that the weak and unhealthy Fedor could be replaced by Dmitry. In addition, after the death of the sickly Fyodor, Dmitry officially could ascend the throne. This would put an end to the influence of Boris Godunov. Therefore, Dmitry, together with his mother, was sent from Moscow to Uglich, which, according to the old tradition, was given to him as an inheritance.
The reign of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich had to further enslavement of the peasantry, the deterioration of the position of serfs. Now the regime of reserved years, which operated in some counties, has spread to the whole country. It ceased to be a temporary measure, but acquired the force of law. This was the government's response to the intensified flight of peasants from the central districts to the southern outskirts of the country from an increase in duties and taxes. They also left the poor landlord farms for the lands of rich estates and monasteries, where they could get help and benefits on the farm. In 1597, Godunov's government introduced fixed summer. Now runaway peasants could be searched for for 5 years, and the former owner himself could conduct the search. This made it difficult for the peasants to flee to new lands.
Rumor associated all these laws with the name of Boris Godunov. The people hated him. In addition, it was believed that another terrible sin hangs on it - the murder of Tsarevich Dmitry. The prince died in 1591 under mysterious circumstances. He was found with his throat cut in his own yard in Uglich. No one saw what happened to the boy. When people ran to the cry of the nanny, he was already dead. Godunov sent a special commission to Uglich, which, having analyzed all the circumstances of the death of the prince, came to the conclusion that Dmitry killed himself while playing with knives. However, people's rumors placed the blame for the death of the prince on Boris Godunov: under the fading and ill Fyodor Ivanovich, Tsarevich Dmitry was the last Rurikovich in a straight line who could prevent the ambitious boyar from officially taking power in the country.
Thus, in the suffering of the people, in the deadly palace struggle, in the rapid advance to power of the former guardsman Boris Godunov, the 16th century ended. Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich died January 7, 1598 The Rurik Dynasty ceased to exist in Russia.
The coming to power of Boris Godunov.
With the death of Fyodor Ivanovich in January 1598, the contradictions between the top of the boyars and Godunov escalated. There was a situation when the suppression of the Rurik dynasty opened up the opportunity to move from autocratic rule of the country to collective government. The boyars decided that power in the country should be transferred to the Boyar Duma. For the sake of this, the Romanovs, Mstislavskys, Golitsyns and other glorious Russian boyar and princely families sacrificed their claims to the throne.
The meeting of the boyars in the Kremlin demanded that the people swear allegiance to the Boyar Duma.
However, Boris Godunov spoke out for the old order. He dreamed of a royal crown, that his son Fyodor would succeed him, continuing the Godunov dynasty. Therefore, simultaneously with the meeting of the Boyar Duma, Patriarch Job convened another meeting in his chambers - the Council, which proposed Godunov as king. This proposal was enthusiastically accepted. Then the patriarch organized a people's procession with icons to the Novodevichy Convent, where Godunov retired, who tearfully asked Godunov to take the throne. But Boris pretended to refuse. A second procession followed, and Boris agreed. Here, in the cathedral of the Novodevichy Convent, the patriarch named Godunov the Russian Tsar. In the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, the patriarch declared Godunov tsar for the second time. But the boyars refused to swear allegiance to him. The threat of split and dual power hung over the country. Only two months later, the general oath to Godunov began, which lasted all summer. Godunov was solemnly proclaimed king for the third time. February 17, 1598 Boris Godunov was elected tsar.
Politics of Boris Godunov.
In an effort to win over the nobles. Boris Godunov arranged for the distribution of their salaries, which had been delayed before. He promoted many in ranks. To alleviate the fate of ordinary people, the new king canceled all tax arrears and eased the tax burden. Godunov encouraged trade in every possible way, endowed the merchants with privileges, and the Church with taxable privileges. Godunov sought to support the economy of the middle service class of the nobles, exalted the humble, but capable people, opposing them to the well-born boyars. It was the first Russian tsar who started fighting bribery. A clerk convicted of taking bribes was taken around the city and flogged with a whip, and a bag with a bribe was hung on his chest, be it money, furs, any goods. Along with the nobility, Godunov also found the worst opponents in the person of the clerical deacon.
Boris Godunov was passionate champion of education highly valued Western culture. Under him, the German settlement in Moscow flourished - Kukuy, where a Protestant church was built. He contributed to the development of book printing in the country, the construction of printing houses, dreamed of creating schools and even opening a university. The first of the Russian tsars, Boris Godunov, began to send noble children abroad for training.
Construction was a special passion of the new king. At his command, the first stone trading shops in Moscow and a stone bridge across the Neglinka River were erected. His name is associated with the construction of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, which still bears an inscription with the name of its creator, Boris Godunov. The king also took care of the improvement of the capital. Under him, new pavements were laid. The first plumbing was installed in the Kremlin
Tsar Boris was always equal, affable, friendly. But behind this gentleness there was a huge will, ambition and an insatiable thirst for power. Feeling the hostile attitude of the boyars and deacons, Godunov became extremely suspicious. Soon the Romanov boyars became victims of this suspicion. Boris sought to remove these very rich and popular boyars from his path. Fyodor Nikitich was tonsured a monk under the name Filaret, his little children, Mikhail and Tatyana, were thrown into prison. As a result, Godunov set against himself the mighty boyar family of the Romanovs.
New national troubles.
The relative calm in the Russian state did not last long. In 1601, a terrible famine broke out in the central districts of Russia. In summer there were endless rains, in August early frosts hit and ruined the crop. The stocks of grain of past years, which were in the barns of peasants and townspeople, quickly came to an end. Already in the fall, food became sorely lacking. Princes, boyars, merchants and clergy, who had large stocks of grain, inflated prices. Speculators and dealers sold bread at exorbitant prices. From hunger, people began to eat cats and dogs, ate linden bark, quinoa and even hay. There were cases of cannibalism. The bodies were not buried. The cholera epidemic began. In Moscow alone, about 120,000 people died of starvation and disease. The pattern repeated itself over the next two years. In just three years, a third of the country's population died out.
Godunov's government tried to dampen the impact of the disaster. Fixed prices for bread were introduced. Speculators and dealers were mercilessly punished. Boris ordered to sell bread from his own granaries at low prices, to crush the money to the people, but the officials gave them to their relatives. Having heard that in Moscow it is easier to escape from misfortunes, people poured into the capital. Refugees robbed state granaries.
Trying to alleviate the plight of the people, November 28, 1601 Godunov restored St. George's Day by his decree. The peasants were again allowed to leave their owners, but the decree did not apply to the Moscow district and state lands. The provincial nobility, losing peasants, became indignant. By the August decree of 1603, the government recognized the serfs expelled from the yards and deprived of food as free. Desperate people by force of arms tried to get their livelihood. Looting and robbery swept the country. The peasants refused to pay taxes to the state and dues to the feudal lords. They went to the free lands of the southern and southwestern outskirts of the state. In the cities, the starving poor attacked the mansions of the rich and robbed the barns. At the same time, ordinary people considered the supreme power the source of all their troubles.
In 1603, a detachment led by ataman Khlopok Kosolap blocked several roads leading to Moscow. The rebels - serfs, peasants, townsmen - smashed boyar and noble estates. After a goal, Cotton's detachments were defeated, he himself, wounded, was captured and was executed.
False Dmitry.
During these years, Godunov's government faced 
with yet another unexpected danger: a man appeared on the southern borders of the country, declaring himself to have escaped from the murderers, Tsarevich Dmitry and declaring his rights to the Russian throne.
Most scholars agree that he was an impoverished Galician nobleman, a servant of one of the Romanov boyars. Grigory Otrepiev. After the fall of this family, he took the vows as a monk, wandered around the monasteries, and served at the court of the patriarch as a copyist of books. Already at this time, Otrepyev inspired those around him with the thought of his unusual origin.
In 1603, he fled to Lithuania, then appeared on the estate of the wealthy Polish nobleman Prince Adam Vishnevetsky, where he declared himself Tsarevich Dmitry, 20-year-old Grigory Otrepyev was a well-educated, gifted man, distinguished by incredible ambition.
The great Russian historian V.O. Klyuchevsky accurately noted that False Dmitry was baked in Poland, but mixed from Moscow dough. Indeed, it was in the mansions of the disgraced Romanovs, among the Moscow clerks, that the idea arose to oppose the impostor to Godunov and topple the hated tsar. The turmoil, which began in 1601 during the famine, intensified with the appearance of an impostor. He was supported in Russia, he was assisted by the Polish king and magnates. Soon the impostor ended up at the court of governor Yuri Mnishek. He fell in love with the governor's 16-year-old daughter Marina and became engaged to her. False Dmitry accepted Catholicism, but secretly, so that the Russian Orthodox people would not turn away from him.
Appeals of False Dmitry found a response among the Cossacks, runaway serfs and peasants. The rumor was spreading that Dmitry Ivanovich was the very just and kind tsar that the people dreamed of. "Tsarevich" did not skimp on promises: to the Polish king, he undertook to transfer the Chernigov-Seversky lands and treasures of the royal treasury: Novgorod and Pskov promised the Mnisheks: he swore to the Polish magnates to reimburse the costs of maintaining his mercenaries. In October 1604, the army of False Dmitry crossed the Dnieper. Cities surrendered to the impostor without a fight. Cossacks, townspeople and archers brought bound governors to him. The number of detachments of False Dmitry quickly increased. Soon, almost all the cities of the south and south-west of the country recognized the authority of the impostor.
Fermentation began in the tsarist army, the number of defectors increased. Godunov received disappointing news from all sides, his health deteriorated. April 13, 1605 he died. There were rumors that the king committed suicide. Moscow began to swear allegiance to his son Fyodor Borisovich. And near Kromy, the tsarist governors with an army went over to the side of False Dmitry. The impostor began to send out charming letters in which he denounced the Godunovs, promised the boyars - the former honor, the nobles - favors and rest from service, merchants - relief from taxes, the people - prosperity. He sent his messengers to Moscow. June 1, 1605 ancestor A.S. Pushkin Gavrila Pushkin at the Execution Ground next to the Kremlin read out the letter of False Dmitry. A popular uprising began in Moscow, which was skillfully led by the impostor's people. The Godunovs fled the Kremlin.
False Dmitry, approaching Serpukhov, demanded reprisals against the Godunovs and their patron, the patriarch. The rebels dragged the patriarch to the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin, tore off his patriarchal clothes and insignia, and threw Job into a wagon that took him to one of the distant monasteries. By order of the messengers of the impostor, the archers killed the tsarina and Fedor, his sister Xenia was later tonsured a nun and sent to the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery. The Godunov dynasty ceased to exist.
On June 20, 1605, to the sound of bells, False Dmitry solemnly entered Moscow. Crowds of people enthusiastically greeted the people's king. On the same day, the boyar Vasily Shuisky, who led the investigation into the death of Tsarevich Dmitry, stated that in 1591 it was not he who was killed, but another boy. Tsarina Maria Nagaya, having met False Dmitry near Moscow, recognized him as her son. Together they went out to the roaring crowd. Before entering the Kremlin, False Dmitry stopped his horse near St. Basil's Cathedral, took off his hat, crossed himself, looked at the Kremlin, at the crowds of people and began to cry. The people, weeping, fell to their knees. On the very first day of his reign, he, like Godunov earlier, vowed not to shed the blood of his subjects.
Personality of False Dmitry.
The appearance of False Dmitry did not fit with the usual ideas about the Russian autocrat. He was a man of quite European customs. For the first time in the country's history, he allowed merchants to travel freely abroad and proclaimed freedom of religion. About Catholics and Orthodox he said: "They are all Christians." False Dmitry actively participated in the work of the Boyar Duma, impressed with his ability to quickly resolve complex issues, twice a week he personally received petitions. He showed himself to be a supporter of the enlightenment of the people, he persuaded the boyars to send their children to study abroad. The new king knew how to keep up a conversation, loved music, did not pray before a meal, did not go to bed during the day. as it was characteristic of the Russian people. False Dmitry taught military men to take fortresses by storm, he himself participated in maneuvers, and accurately fired from cannons.
At the beginning of the XVII century. Russia was not ready for such a break in customs. The clergy and the common people met such innovations with distrust and surprise. These feelings were especially intensified when the tsar's bride Marina Mnishek appeared in Moscow, accompanied by 2,000 Polish gentry. The Russian people were amazed that their tsar would marry a Catholic. Marina refused to take communion from the hands of an Orthodox priest, to put on a Russian dress. The pans and guards accompanying her behaved defiantly.
Board of False Dmitry.
Having taken the throne, False Dmitry tried to improve relations with the Boyar Duma: he confirmed its powers, promised the boyars to preserve their estates: he returned to Moscow many disgraced boyars and clerks, primarily the surviving Romanovs. Filaret (Fyodor Romanov) was honored with the rank of metropolitan.
Like previous rulers, False Dmitry sought to rely on the nobles. He gave them huge amounts of money, endowed them with lands inhabited by peasants. It was difficult for the new tsar to choose a policy towards serfs and peasants: to alleviate their fate meant to restore the tops of society against themselves, and to leave the weight as it was - to push away the masses that brought him to power. False Dmitry compromised:
- set free the serfs who fell into bondage in the famine years
- exempted from taxes the inhabitants of the southwestern regions, who gave him the greatest support;
- left free the peasants who fled from the masters in the famine years.
At the same time he:
- increased the terms of the lesson years,
- retained serfdom inviolable.
- continued the popular fight against bribery, forbidding, under pain of death, taking bribes.
- by allowing the representatives of the peasant communities to deliver the collected taxes to the treasury themselves, he dealt a blow to the habit of clerks to pocket part of the tax funds for themselves.
The Orthodox clergy were suspicious of the connections of the new tsar with the Catholic Poles. The clergy watched with indignation how the Poles were constantly next to the tsar, how boldly they behaved in Orthodox churches. But in relations with Poland, from the very first days of his reign, False Dmitry showed himself to be an adherent of Russian interests in Orthodoxy. He refused to provide the previously promised territories to the Polish king, cut the pay of Polish mercenaries, and more than once spoke in favor of the return of the western lands captured by the Commonwealth to Russia. At the same time, fearing boyar conspiracies, False Dmitry kept bodyguards of foreigners near him, Poles were his close advisers. This irritated the Russian population.
The end of False Dmitry.
By order of False Dmitry, noble detachments were drawn to Moscow, a campaign against the Crimean Khanate was coming. Novgorodians and Pskovians were led by the princes Shuisky and Golitsyn, who organized against L 
zhedmitry conspiracy. On the morning of May 17, 1606, the alarm sounded alarmingly in Moscow. The townspeople rushed to smash the yards where the Poles were stationed. A detachment of 200 armed nobles, led by boyar conspirators, entered the Kremlin, and the conspirators broke into the tsar's chambers. False Dmitry came out to them with a sword in his hands, but after a short fight he retreated into the bedroom. Jumping out of the window, he sprained his leg and broke his chest. The conspirators searched in vain for him. Unsuspecting archers carried the king into the palace. The conspirators immediately hacked him to death with swords. For three days the body of False Dmitry lay on Red Square for all to see. Then the corpse was burned, the ashes were loaded into a cannon and shot in the direction from which the impostor had come. Marina Mnishek and her father were arrested and sent to Yaroslavl.
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